War of the West
by MadHighlander
Summary: The First Chariot Troop has returned from a supposedly minor mission to the untamed wilderness in the West unharmed, but not unscathed. This is their story, of death and warfare, and through it, a new appreciation for peace and life. T for upcoming gore.
1. Prologue: Post Traumatic

**For those of you who came here via my profile (of which there are probably few) welcome back! Those of you who made it here from the general Civilization lists, Welcome! To the former: I must apologise for the delay on The Six Cores. I have severe writers' block. it'll fix eventually, but I oft find that the best cure for writers' block is to write something else for a while. So here is the prologue of a tale based upon real events in my Civ IV file. (Or one of them, anyway.) This is short, fairly short, but it is only a prologue. The following chapters will be longer, I promise.**

/

_**France**_

_**750 AD**_

"Welcome back to Paris, Captain François!" The charioteer was greeted enthusiastically by the younger crossbowman. "You must tell us what it is like in the far-off Western lands!"

The Captain of the First Chariot Troop, François Levant, looked vaguely surprised at the strange accoutrements of the city's defenders.

"And why were you gone for so long? We didn't think you would take longer than a few weeks to exterminate the barbarians and clear our trade routes. King Louis even sent our entire fleet to Beijing, because he suspected President Zedong of treachery!"

"We have a... fleet?" asked François, in a dazzled tone of voice.

"Oh yes..." The crossbowman's grin dropped a few notches. "We've made a lot of advances here in France since you left. There's been a new religion founded north of here, in Hamburg. We suspect the remains of the German heretics are back at it again. Just shortly after you left, actually."

"And what is that?" continued François. "It looks like someone accidentally welded their arrow to their bow."

"It's a new weapon, sir. Just built recently. We all upgraded as soon as it was created. They say it's twice as powerful as a regular bow and arrow."

"Warfare. Is that all that's been going on since I left? Just endless killing and arguing about whose weapon was stronger?"

The guard's smile slipped again. "Well, no, sir. Our fleet is little used, except for trading, and exploring. And up north, all the way in Berlin, there's been a new edict passed for religious tolerance. Which I'm not so sure about, but it's bringing in a lot more income. That helped the Empire afford these crossbows."

"Well, I'm afraid my journey hasn't been nearly as peaceful. It's been hell, actually."

"Sir?"

François fingered his eyepatch, an accessory he hadn't needed when he'd left Orleans so long ago. "Nothing but death, death, and more death. And for what?"

"To protect the empire, sir. More would've died if you'd left the barbarians to their own devices." The guard no longer wore a smile. This encounter wasn't going at all as he'd expected.

"Would they? We are all safe, hiding here in France behind our Great Wall. The Barbarians couldn't get through when it was built and they can't now. Believe me."

"But what about our simple traders? Or our friends, the Chinese? They're not safe. They probably will never be completely so. But you've made their lives better."

"Maybe so, lad. I find it hard to believe that all that death was worth it by any sense."

"What happened out there, Captain? You've changed so much from how people speak of you. How many didn't make it?"

"Only the First Troop has returned. The Second and Third were decimated."

"What of the two squads of Axemen dispatched to assist you?"

"They were killed near Mycenae. We just managed to meet when they sacrificed themselves."

"I'm sorry, sir. It must have been worse than I'd imagined."

"It was worse than I'd imagined, too. What's your name, boy?"

"Alexandre."

"Well, Alexandre, let me tell you about the second war, the one that will probably be remembered as a minor skirmish. But it was so, so much more than that. Listen to my story of the War in the West."

/

**It's a little awkward dealing in AD and BC in Civ. Oh well. Just disregard the time reference for now. It might be important later, but that's the actual date listed... Whatever. I'll just do everything in Civ Time.**

**Past this, most everything will be written in the first person, which is a new thing to me. Fingers crossed, knock on wood, yadda yadda yadda. **


	2. Chapter 1: The Pilgrim

"You would expect that my story would begin just after we left Orleans. It doesn't. It starts a few weeks just before. There were a lot of things going on just then, like the new pacifist movement, and the construction of the Kashi Vishwanath. We had been hearing rumors of another new religion, as well. But none of that mattered to us quite yet. You see, we had just finished off a war. 'We' being the first, second, and third chariot troops. We hadn't gotten involved much in the fighting against the Germans, so we hadn't actually seen the true nature of war. We were essentially on mop-up duty.

That had been Louis' strategy then; send the weaker troops in first to soften the enemy up, then move in with other units to clear up any remaining resistance. Maybe if I'd had time to think I'd have seen something wrong with that, but while we were still in such close communication with the higher-ups, we were pretty much receiving constant orders. Anyway, we'd just gotten through with the thorough destruction of Cologne and had been given leave to do whatever until given further orders. We stayed in Berlin. We thought we might be needed, because of reports coming in from former German cities of resistance from the German-descended population. They'd physically rebelled a couple times, and wrecked some farms and cottages, but nothing we couldn't handle.

But enough about that. Eventually news came in from Louis: there was some sightings of Barbarian marauders down the north coast and near the Chinese borders. Even though we were safe, Mao Zedong was reporting that they were threatening his eastern borders, south of Westlake. As a gesture of goodwill, Louis had agreed to send us in to clear out the barbarians, and open a new land route for trade. So we headed south to Orleans to resupply.

While we were there, we started studying maps of the no-mans'-land in the center of the continent, trying to figure out where the barbarians were attacking from. As we later discovered, our thoughts were completely useless and would have shot us off in completely the wrong direction, had it not been for one fortuitous meeting.

We found him on the sixth day in Orleans, running straight through the west gate, his robes in tatters and his face all scratched up. I remember asking him who he was, because he didn't look anything like a silkworker, and that's all there was out the West Gate of Orleans at the time; some newly-built silk plantations.

He introduced himself as Wen Tao, a fifth-generation Chinese Frenchman from Hamburg. I asked him why he'd been out West, and he simply replied that he'd been attempting to go on a pilgrimage. He refused to speak more on the subject, so I asked him what happened. He replied that he'd been hugging the north coast and heading West, and when he'd crested a hill and left the forest, he saw in the distance a small city. Curious, he approached, but was attacked when he got closer. Terrified, he said, he fled back to France, under constant attack until he reached the Wall.

I brought him back to our military building.

"Who's this?" asked the captain of the Second Troop, Renée Lavert, standing up from a map of the Western Lands. I introduced Tao, who was cowering behind my back like a small child. I suppose I couldn't blame him; he, with no combat training whatsoever, had been attacked alone in the wilderness by an entire barbarian horde.

I mentioned this. "And he's still conscious? I'm duly impressed." Said Thierry, captain of the Third. "Is he willing to show us where they are?"

"He says he can," I said.

We questioned Tao on where he'd been attacked. He described a cold forest just around Revolution Bay from Orleans, and the Barbarian fighters that had attacked him. Sure enough, Roberto, the Captain of the retired Warrior troop defending Orleans, had confirmed that they matched the descriptions of Barbarian nomads that he'd fought long ago while mapping the continent. And a good thing we found Wen Tao, I thought, since we were all ready to charge off into the desert in the southwest. The complete opposite direction of the barbarians' real location, according to Wen.

Renée had another question. "Could you pinpoint their location on a map?"

"I don't know," he said, "It depends on how precisely you need me to show you. I definitely have a general location."

We took him to our world map, on the table. Sure enough, he circled a large part of the west coast of Revolution Bay. It wasn't as good as it could've been, but it was something for us to go on.

Strangely for someone who had been so ill-treated at the Barbarians' hands, he was eager for us to leave. When we asked him why, he said something in Chinese that I didn't understand, and changed the subject.

After fourteen days' preparation, we were ready to leave. I remember a lot of people turned up to wish us good luck, and a couple of those pacifists turned up to throw things. I gathered they didn't approve of military action. Wen Tao hid his face as we passed.

The silk plantation workers pretty much ignored us. They just made silk. Our mission didn't matter much to them. Still, though, we did get a nice sendoff when we reached the end of the road. One silk worker, I never got his name, gave me a dark silk hat to wear under my helm. He said it would be more comfortable than just the hard bronze. I tried it out, and sure enough, he was right.

Then, we turned off northeast, and rode through a forest and up a hill. There was no real civilization there, at least not when I left. There's a road, now. We took it on our way back. But there was nothing then. Sometimes it seemed as if even the birds were gone. But that illusion was dispelled when we reached the Wall.

I don't even know how long it is, exactly. It goes around the entire Empire, that's all I know. And there are gates every few hundred miles. Fortunately, there was one just where we arrived, otherwise our horses and chariots wouldn't have been able to get past. It opened with a lot of groaning and grinding, and we passed through, trumpets heralding our departure.

/

And there's another chapter done. I'm really not good at the first person, but I gave it a try here. Bear with me.

As a few points of reference, for the story: I'm Louis XIV, of the French empire, state religion: Hinduism. At the time the story starts, our army, formerly consisting of 13 Chariot troops, just finished conquering the Germans under Justinian I.


	3. Chapter 2: Anasazi

We made good time through the forest. Excellent, in fact. On the third day, we encountered a group of Barbarian warriors, wielding simple clubs. We made short work of them, without a single casualty. This gave us confidence, you see, because we thought that the Barbarians would all be like that small group. Following Wen Tao's directions, we came to the Barbarians' delineated border in a week.

It was a simple thing. Clearly they'd made it themselves. There were sharpened sticks placed in the ground at certain intervals, and occasionally a ragged, black banner hung from them, emblazoned with a skull. These fluttered ominously in the wind. A raven, too, perched on the closest beam. It was utterly unafraid of us, staying where it perched even as we rode past. As my chariot passed it, it cawed raucously, and I noticed that it had a shining scar on its underbelly, as if it had cut itself on something.

It flew away after we passed. In the distance, there was a severed wolf head on a stick. This reinforced our preconceived impressions of the Barbarians, and at the time, the sign just beyond it disgusted me just as much, for it was written in our letters. I could not identify what the paint (if that was what it was - it was an odd brown color) was made of, and I didn't care to find out. But what disgusted me was to think that these _animals_ - that was exactly what ran through my head, _animals_ - originated from the same ancestors as ourselves. The sign read simply, 'Anasazi'.

Renee and Thierry drew alongside my chariot.

"To a good fight!" said Renee, pulling down his helmet visor and raising his sword arm.

"A good fight!" said Thierry and I, doing the same. Wen Tao winced noticeably.

We crested a hill, and saw the city ahead. My heart sank slightly when I saw the high, formidable stone wall surrounding the entire border of the tiny city of Anasazi. This was not a level of technology we had expected from the Barbarians.

"Nothing to worry about. We storm the gates, use a few battering rams. Seriously, it's not like they've got archers," said Thierry. If only we'd known how much we truly had underestimated the Barbarians.

But no. We all yelled to our troops, 'CHARGE!' and we sped down the face of the hill towards the Anasazi, announcing our presence as loudly as possible. The sounds of our horses galloping drowned out all other sounds.

Suddenly, a black cloud of missiles arced over the wall. We reined in our horses, but not quickly enough. Looking to my left, I saw Jean, a charioteer serving under Renee, looking up in panic one moment, then the next falling off the back of his chariot, peppered with shafts. He looked like a gigantic porcupine.

Thinking quickly, I pushed Wen Tao down and covered us with my shield. There was a clattering noise as the barbarian arrows bounced off the shield. When the noise stopped, I chanced another look.

They were opening the gates. A small group of warriors with clubs, like those we had seen earlier, stepped out and looked towards us.

I looked around at our own people. Miraculously, casualties hadn't been too heavy. Some, like Jean, had died without a sound, but others were completely unharmed.

I looked back, at the arrows sticking up from the ground. They were gathered into many close-knit clusters, rather than spread evenly throughout the battlefield.

"Their tactics are inferior! Quick, before they can shoot again, make for the door while it's open! On even ground, archers stand no chance against us Charioteers!" I yelled. My troop charged the warriors, followed by the other two, as Renee and Thierry echoed my orders.

It was more folly.

As we reached the exact point where we could not turn back, more soldiers stepped out from where they had been hidden behind the Warriors. These ones were armored in bronze, and wielded bronze spears six feet long. As we approached, too fast to turn, they levelled the spears at us, impaling and killing many of our horses. As the charioteers whose mounts had been slain attempted to climb out of their overturned chariots, the spearmen walked casually up to them and beheaded them.

We fought well, but due to our poor foresight, our 'quick cleansing' very nearly ended then and there. I called the retreat after about five minutes, and we fled back into the hills, where we set up camp. The barbarians dragged our fallen comrades into the city as we watched from above.

We were safe enough in the hills. We decided to use the opportunity to plan out what we would do in the rest of our campaign, to prevent such things from occurring again. The first thing that we suggested was that we send Wen Tao back to safety.

"It's only through good luck that he survived this fight," I said. "It's not safe enough for a civilian out here."

He replied with surprising force, considering how nervous he was. "No. I started this. I intend to see it either completed or stopped." He was almost less nervous now than he had been when we had found him in the streets of Orleans. "I'm not going back to the Empire."

I recall wondering what scared him more about the French than the Barbarian hordes that had almost killed him. However, given that he _was_ a civilian, I didn't have the authority to order him back to Orleans, and it seemed we could do nothing to convince him, so we let the matter rest temporarily. Instead, we focussed on ways to get the upper hand over the barbarians.

It was Thierry who suggested a solution. "What if one troop were to lead the spearmen away from the city? To the north, say? If that were done, the rest of the garrison would fall easily to the remaining two troops, and the spearmen, unfortified, could easily be destroyed in the wilderness."

He volunteered to take his troop. I agreed to let him do so, while Renee and I waited in the woods to ambush the undefended city. At sunup Thierry and his troop rode north past the city, winding their war-horns. The barbarians' response time was admirable: it took less than five minutes for the spearmen to pour out of the gates and pursue. We waited about half an hour, then stormed the city (this time I at least insisted that Wen Tao stayed in the woods, where he'd at least be safer than with us). This time we knew to cover ourselves with our shields against the barbarian arrows.

Once they realized that we were protected from their arrows, they had what may have been a tough decision to make, but in the end they made it: they opened the doors and sent out their club-wielders to deal with us. This, as it turned out, was the wrong decision: we routed the warriors, and then streamed through the doors before they could be reclosed.

True, we suffered losses, but we also routed the archers just as easily as we had the warriors. Once we had established control, I went over the resource assessment data that Roberto and Maurice (the captain of the Second Warrior Troop and Roberto's fellow early explorer) had collected regarding the area. There was a herd of wild cattle to the west, but nothing else of value. And if there's anything France has too much of, it's cattle. I ordered the city burned; we'd wait for Thierry outside.

Before we set our torches to the houses, I took a small group of people around the city to search for the French who had been killed during the first disastrous charge. Eventually I found what was left of them: some burnt bones, ashy arms and armor. My first thought was that they had been roasted and eaten. This heightened my resolve; we would kill every last one of the Anasazi. Later I realized that some of the arms and armor in the ash pile were actually _bronze_ rather than French _steel_; our comrades hadn't been eaten, they'd been given the same funeral rites as the Anasazi gave their own dead. By the time I realised this it was too late; I had already exterminated the Anasazi, except for a few who escaped and headed west. But more about them later.

That night, the flames from the burning city staved off the cold air. Wen Tao had an odd look in his eye as he gazed upon the flames, clutching a pendant that he carried around his neck.

/

More writer's block being staved off back here. I'm currently working on new chapters for _four_ stories, between here and FictionPress. Also a new _story_ or two, both crossovers. (Dead Space/Portal, Stargate SG1/Doctor Who). Anyway, it's nice to get this updated. Unfortunately, I'm going to be correlating this to the events of my file more and more from memory, given that someone has uninstalled Civ4 from my computer. Fortunately, I have written down the major details. (city names, etc.)

Madhighlander Away!


End file.
